NBA HORSE Tournament April 2020 (ESPN)

[Puck Frovidence]

Happy Easter and Happy Passover yall, figured I'd make a post about this. In an effort to satiate the sports-starved public, the NBA and ESPN have partnered to put together a HORSE tournament starting tonight (4/12) featured current and former NBA and WNBA players. Each competitor will play from home remotely...should be interesting to see how it works at the very least.

The schedule is

Sunday 4/12 7pm - ESPN
Quarterfinals
Trae Young vs. Chauncey Billups
Tamika Catchings vs. Mike Conley
Zach LaVine vs. Paul Pierce
Chris Paul vs. Allie Quigley


Thursday 4/16 9pm - ESPN
Semis/Finals

The games will also stream on the ESPN app, but I believe you will need TV subscription to watch.

Considering it's been five weeks since we've seen anything even vaguely live basketball related, I'm very ready for this. LFG!

[rhodyruckus]

The courts were so different, was tough to even matchup the shots. Then you have Mike Conley in his temperature controlled indoor gym, going against Catchings who is on a tiny driveway "court" freezing in gale force winds. The shots from the grass are pretty funny though, reminds me of my neighbor's small backyard strip of pavement when we were kids, where most of the shooting was off the surrounding grass.

[SGreenwell]

The courts were so different, was tough to even matchup the shots. Then you have Mike Conley in his temperature controlled indoor gym, going against Catchings who is on a tiny driveway "court" freezing in gale force winds. The shots from the grass are pretty funny though, reminds me of my neighbor's small backyard strip of pavement when we were kids, where most of the shooting was off the surrounding grass.

I kind of liked the disparity of the courts, but yeah - the difference in weather is pretty tough, haha. This seems like a trial balloon, and it would be fun to see the next attempt go even wider - Expand it out to 64 competitors, and include stuff like a Harlem Globetrotter, a "Dude Perfect" person, a college player, high school, a regular kid, etc.

[rjsuperfly66]

This may have been one of the worst things I ever watched. I watch many of these things, and I found this simply insufferable. I think much of it was the camera quality. It was terrible in most circumstances. Then you had people who lacked original thought and kept replicating the same 3-4 shot attempts, and the one matchup I cared about, LaVine vs Pierce, they say no dunks and LaVine is doing these athletic layups and borderline dunks (laying the ball in from above the rim) that Pierce had no shot at.

Off-topic - I thought ESPN blew the presentation on the 2k player tournament. I'm not watching because I want to see the players. I'm watching because I want to see something resembling basketball. To have, in many cases, the players taking up 50% of the screen and the game in a rather small section was just a miss. I get it, the player trash talk is fun, but they should have had them as small overlays. I think ESPN is missing the point of why people are willing to watch these.

[reef]

I agree I thought it was basically unwatchable looking to the NFL draft

[rhodyruckus]

I'd probably equate it with the scrambled adult channels from the old cable boxes that one could tune into for hopes of a quick flash, it was a tough watch but without any real material on hand, any port in a storm. Ok I've said too much...

[NYGFan_Section208]

I agree I thought it was basically unwatchable looking to the NFL draft

In the past 10 years, I think I've watched maybe 20 minutes of NFL draft, because I've always thought it was unwatchable. I'm kinda looking forward to it this year tho, because I think the situation is ripe for some unintentional comedy. ZOOM and remote meetings...regardless of how savvy the users are, always have some kind of 'something happening'... I think it's likely we see stuff like, folks from the same team yelling at each other from different locations, tech glitches like delayed audio...some profanity...computers freezing (and more profanity), wives/kids/pets walking into rooms...could be fun.